


Playing the Field

by Mephistophelia



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, But mostly fluff honestly, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Neither of these boys are any good at relationships, Partly smutty clear by evening, Track and Field, but they are so good for each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:10:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mephistophelia/pseuds/Mephistophelia
Summary: Fedya doesn't believe in sports. He doesn't really believe in love, either. But when he gets to know the good-looking distance runner on the IM team, suddenly it doesn't matter what he believes.Or: the Great Comet college track team AU, which I wrote for myself and the three other people who have always wanted this.





	1. Hit the Showers

**Author's Note:**

> What, you mean the universe *wasn't* waiting on a Great Comet college IM track team AU? From me, the writer who's never successfully written a modern AU in her life?
> 
> Whoops. At least I'm having fun.
> 
> And I have the semblance of a plot for this one, so hopefully it'll get off the ground without crashing and burning this time!

Fedya has no patience for sports of any description. He doesn’t believe in them as a concept. Artificial aggression and rage with no real purpose, just to prove your masculinity or bring Honor to the Motherland or something else inane he’s never understood. So when Denisov suggests Fedya should go out for the intramural track team, the whole thing feels like a joke. He goes in the end, just to shut up his friend. It’s easier than arguing.

To Fedya’s dismay, he makes the team.

To his growing horror, he even finds himself enjoying it.

He’s better at discus than anyone else who shows for tryouts, and boasts a decent arm with a shot put too. It’s enjoyable. Satisfying. He doesn’t know what to do with that. But he’s having fun doing something that doesn’t involve drinking, for the first time since ROTC. Denisov, from the bleachers, smirks.  _ I told you so,  _ says the smirk. Fedya ignores him.

The IM team isn’t serious, just a few hours a week, but they’re good. They win competition after competition, against the university thirty minutes away, against schools farther than that. And there are auxiliary benefits as well, besides the physical exertion and the pleasure of victory. 

Fedya’s events are short, and often at the beginning of the meet. This gives him plenty of time for scientific experimentation. By the second meet, he has formulated a hypothesis, tested it thoroughly, and declared it a sound theory. 

The theory is this: Fedya Dolokhov has a type, and that type is distance runners.

Eighty percent legs. Lean and graceful. God, it’s like watching a Greek god circle the 400 meters. 

There’s one in particular Fedya can’t stop watching. A sophomore, nineteen probably, a year younger than Fedya, and the team’s top man in the 4x400 hurdles. He blasts out a mile in ungodly time, too, something stupid and improbable like five and a half minutes, but it’s the hurdles Fedya loves to watch. The runner’s flawless body in perfect motion, lean legs lunging, then soaring through the finish line, bold and confident, as if his feet don’t touch the ground. Fuck. It’s everything. Fedya daydreams about it constantly, to the point that he’s almost failing calculus.

The runner’s confidence is affected, Fedya thinks. The peroxide blonde of his daringly styled hair suggests that he’s compensating for some insecurity, as does his smile, too frequent and too bright to be real. But Fedya doesn’t mind. Affected or not, the runner is a pleasure to watch.

And watch Fedya does.

And does.

After the next meet, Fedya hits the showers late. He’s hung back near the stands, chatting with Sonya, a friend from class. He warned her not to come, that the meets were dead boring and lasted hours, but she seems to have enjoyed herself. She’s that sort, the type who will enjoy anything if it makes others smile. He likes talking to her, but he’s let the shower go too long, and sweat has dried on his muscles and chills him.

Shivering, he ducks into the locker room and cranks the knob in the bank of showers as hot as it will go. He glances right, then left, then right again, then strips down. It feels paranoid, but Fedya will be damned before he finds himself exposed in the shower around a crowd of sweaty athletes. He’s bold, at ease, confident in his own skin, but Jesus, there are limits.

He sighs, letting the warm water cascade across him. It feels perfect.

Then, despite the heat, he freezes.

Because the bleach-blonde hurdler has just strolled into the showers, head high, confident as Christ, naked as the day he was born.

He catches sight of Fedya and grins, as if meeting a high school acquaintance at the post office.

“Dolokhov, right?” he says, stepping under a nearby showerhead. He’s barefoot, even. Fedya wants to warn him about ringworm. 

Fedya can’t form a goddamn thought.

The water slicks back the runner’s hair and darkens it almost gray, like brushed metal. Water drops bead down his chest, down the tight muscle of his thighs. Fedya tries not to trace their passage too obviously.

Fedya does not succeed.

“Yeah,” he says. “And you’re…”

Gorgeous, he finishes in his head, but has to say something else out loud.

“Kutuzov?” 

The runner laughs. “Close,” he says, and tilts his head back, raking what looks to be expensive shampoo through his hair. Fedya himself has washed his hair with hand soap for a year. “Kuragin. Anatole.”

“Fedya,” he says. Reasoning they might as well be on first-name terms, if he’s been staring at Anatole Kuragin’s cock for a good three accidental minutes. Glancing down, he sees his own erection rising and cranks the shower to cold.

Anatole doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. On the contrary, Fedya could swear he’s doing it on purpose, displaying himself like a goddamn runway model, though his blue eyes never show any consciousness of his own body. He turns, bending over to pick up a bottle of conditioner from the floor.

Had Fedya been alone, watching a similar scene on his laptop with his hand down his pants, he would have come instantly. As it is, he feels a moan in the hollow of his throat, and hides it as a cough. Jesus fucking goddamn Christ. Anatole must be doing it on purpose. You can’t have an ass that tight, that firm, that perfect, and not know what you’re doing with it every second of every day.

Fedya turns the water off and reaches for a towel, which he hastily wraps around his waist.

Anatole straightens, slowly, taking his time. With Anatole’s back to him, Fedya can see thin white ridges of scar tissue rippling his back, like cracked porcelain.

“I haven’t seen you much, before you joined,” Anatole says, turning back. “You new?”

“Transfer,” Fedya says, a little hoarsely. “Community college, in Austerlitz. I was ROTC there, until the war ended.”

Anatole smiles. Fedya suspected that smile from a distance. Up close, he can’t doubt it. Anatole doesn’t have a drop of guile in him. He means everything he does. His eyes show everything he thinks. Fedya prays his own eyes are a little more circumspect than Anatole’s. His thoughts, at the moment, are inexcusably vulgar.

“I’m glad,” Anatole says. “We’ve been garbage in the field for months, we needed you.”

Fedya blushes like a child.

Anatole rinses the conditioner out of his hair, then closes his eyes, letting the hot water needle his body. It reminds Fedya of  _ Flashdance.  _ First of all, how dare he. “You have plans tonight?” Anatole says.

Fedya’s plans, right now, involve his hand, a Kleenex, and a photographic memory of this exact moment.

“No,” he says.

“My sister’s having a party,” Anatole says, as if Fedya knows his sister. “At the old manor house, out by the sororities. You know the one?”

Fedya gapes. He does know the one. That house is three hundred years old. It cost two million rubles to build. It’s a national monument. It has a fucking plaque.

“How—”

“Hélène has connections,” Anatole says, grinning. He turns off the shower. Naked. Dripping. Glorious. “I’m going around eleven. You should come, Dolokhov.”

“I—”

“Please come?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...genuinely do not know if this is decent or terrible? So any thoughts you have to share on that topic, via comment or kudo or carrier pigeon, are like way appreciated.


	2. Nightlife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fandom is the best fandom, and I just love you all and am grateful for your encouragement and kindness. #GC4Lyfe. (Special shoutout to @MaplePaizley and @thewhiskerydragon, whose honest-to-God phone tree is the greatest thing ever to happen to me as a fic writer.) 
> 
> Without further ado, here's the next installment of Back on My Danatole Bullshit: 2 Track 2 Field.
> 
> N.B. the rating of this fic is mostly for this chapter. In case you're, I don't know, reading with small children.

Fedya has no intention of going.

He doesn’t think Anatole meant it, really. A naked invite in a locker room shower. Well, it’s not exactly a mailed postcard, is it? You can’t RSVP to that.

More importantly, Fedya doubts he can maintain his composure in Anatole’s presence a second time. He's all but guaranteed to do something incredibly stupid that will make this distance runner want to keep his distance. Fedya's not even certain he managed to avoid doing something incredibly stupid the first time. His memories of their conversation are somewhat fuzzy. He only half-listened to anything Anatole said.

Still.

What else is he going to do, really.

At 11:15, Fedya finds himself on the steps of the manor house, listening to the throbbing bass of EDM spilling into the street and rattling the leaves on the trees. He takes a breath, bracing himself, before stepping inside.

It’s like tumbling through the looking-glass.

The inside of the house is vast, grand, vaguely Victorian. The ceiling towers twenty feet overhead, and dark wood-paneled rooms house antique furniture, wallpaper centuries out of date. The air is dim, smoky, the scent of beer and pot like a visible haze. Tight knots of sweaty half-dressed bodies fill the rooms like ghosts from another era, dancing and grinding into one another, a shriek, laughter, snatches of song. A bright blue bra dangles from the crystal chandelier. In the parlor, three drunk girls are playing a dangerous game of darts, tossing steak knives blade-first at an oil painting of the university dean.

And there, in the center of it all, is Anatole.

He’s standing on a table with a half-empty vodka bottle dangling from his hand. He looks brave and daring and slightly unsteady in the knees, like a sea captain. Fedya can’t stop staring at him. Anatole is an apparition. A dream. He wears the deepest V-neck tee Fedya has ever seen, the same sharp blue as his eyes. His pants hug his ass like a thin layer of paint. On closer inspection, Fedya realizes they’re made of leather, because of course they are. Anatole has spiked his hair up until it glows white through the dim. His look is halfway between Apollo and David Bowie.

“Dolokhov!” he yells, spotting him, and gestures with the bottle.

Anatole hops down from the table, as easily as vaulting a hurdle. Fedya hopes Anatole can’t see him blush through the dark. Personally, he does most of his drinking at bars, or home alone. He’s terrible at parties, and knows this. But Anatole thrives here. So Fedya will make an effort.

Close enough to be heard over the thrum of the bass, Anatole smells like amber and sweat and the harsh bite of vodka. Fedya has to stop himself from purring as the scent slides into him. It feels so good, to be close to him. Better than it should.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Anatole says.

Fedya gestures vaguely. “Nice place,” he says, indicating the whole of the multi-million-ruble mansion.

Anatole presses the vodka bottle toward Fedya. His aim is a little off; Fedya has to catch it with both hands. “Drink,” he says, grinning.

“No, it’s yours—”

“It’s Hélène’s,” Anatole says, and laughs. “Everything I’ve got I steal from her.”

Fedya laughs too and throws the bottle back. He needs the vodka badly. The flaming clear haze gives him the courage to speak in front of this man. Without it, he’d stand silent and stupid all night.

“Good shit,” he says. It is.

“You smoke?” Anatole asks.

He’s not holding a joint. It doesn’t seem to be an offer. Fedya wonders if he’s just curious.

“No,” he says.

Anatole shrugs. “That’s fine. You want to dance?”

Fedya chokes on a mouthful of vodka. Anatole waits patiently until Fedya remembers how to breathe. His blue eyes are smiling. Fedya is spiraling.

Does he want to dance?

Fedya doesn’t dance.

He’s never wanted to dance more in his entire life.

“With—” he begins.

Anatole clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, like an annoyed grandmother. “With me, Dolokhov, fuck’s sake.”

Fedya blushes again. Anatole seems impervious to embarrassment. He’s just asked Fedya to dance like it’s nothing, like he asked to borrow a pencil. In public. In fucking public, in front of other people. And he did it while wearing those goddamn fucking pants. It’s not even _fair._ Fedya doesn’t know what Anatole sees in him, to make it worth asking, when he could have anybody. Maybe he doesn’t see anything. Could just be the vodka. But this chance won’t come again. And so, even though he doesn’t dance, has never danced, loathes dancing, Fedya takes a long drink of vodka and nods.

“OK,” he says.

Anatole hops back up on the table, extending a hand to help Fedya up. It’s like Aladdin helping Jasmine onto the goddamn magic carpet.

Fedya stares. He’s agreed to dance. He hasn’t agreed to dance on a stage.

But then, wherever Anatole stands is a stage. Eyes go to him. They just do. That’s the point.

Anatole takes Fedya’s hand and pulls him up, then in, close. Their hips press hard together. Anatole is narrow, all tight muscles and sharp bones, but he fits perfectly in the space Fedya gives him. His arms are confident, loose with vodka, as they twine around Fedya’s waist. His fingers hook in Fedya’s belt loops. His smile is slow and cool and smooth.

This isn’t dancing. Not the way Fedya knows it. There’s no awkwardness here, just the switching rhythm of Anatole as he moves Fedya in time to the beat, his scent intoxicating, his body lean and hard and warm. Fedya gasps as Anatole’s thigh brushes his cock—he is hard, has been hard since the beginning of this mess, he can’t help that.

Anatole grins. One gasp and he knows the score. He grows bolder. His hands shift, slipping between Fedya’s jeans and his bare skin. His breath is hot and delicious against Fedya’s neck. Too close, too goddamn close to his ear, Fedya can’t stand this.

And there.

The soft pressure of Anatole’s lips, there along Fedya’s throat, gentle but urgent. Fedya groans.

Anatole flicks his eyes up to Fedya. Judging the scene. All Fedya can think is how Anatole’s eyes would look just that wide, just that innocently pleased, if he were on his knees, about to blow Fedya into next Tuesday.

“That OK?” Anatole asks, smiling at Fedya’s transparent thoughts.

“Fuck yes,” Fedya says.

He cups a hand around the back of Anatole's head, nests his fingers into that soft hair, and kisses him.

Anatole hums into Fedya, a soft vibrating want Fedya can hear and feel and taste. Their bodies crush together, mouths and chest and hips until they are one tangle of confusion and shameless lust. Anatole tastes like the space between the third and fourth drink, when everything is possible and nothing hurts yet. Fedya slips his hands up under Anatole’s shirt, playing the pattern of his scars like the fretboard of a guitar.

Anatole’s thigh is still doing that thing. That thing that it does, right there.

Fucking hell.

He’s still doing it.

From somewhere beyond them, someone whistles. A woman’s voice cat-calls. But that doesn’t matter. Campus parties always end up this way. Strangers kissing strangers, clothing discarded, wild nights and eye contact avoided the next morning.

It couldn’t happen any other way.

Fedya breaks the kiss, though he doesn’t pull away from Anatole’s thigh. He meets Anatole’s eyes, radiant and blue and grinning, both of them breathless.

“Come the fuck on,” Fedya growls.

Anatole laughs and hops off the table. It’s a three-foot drop, but he lands neatly, despite the half-bottle of vodka inside him. "Thought you'd never ask," he says.

Anatole has begun to lead him out of the main room, toward the stairs, but Fedya doesn’t have the patience to be led. He takes Anatole by the wrist and pulls him up the stairs, down a hallway that wouldn’t look out of place in a gothic novel, opens the first room that isn’t locked.

The room is already occupied.

So are the people inside it.

The woman, dark curly hair mussed and wild, is on top and in charge. She directs the man beneath her, a sturdily built fellow, hair and beard in need of a cut, a pair of spectacles still on his nose, as if afraid he’ll lose his chance with her if he pauses to take them off.

Fedya slams the door. The couple doesn’t even notice.

Anatole, for some reason, has doubled over, shaking with silent laughter. Fedya scowls at him.

“What?"

“I…” Anatole looks up at Fedya, then loses it, cracks up again. “You know who that was?”

It could have been the ghost of Lenin and Fedya wouldn’t care.

“My sister,” Anatole says.

Fedya blinks. Well. Jesus. If he walked in on his sister mid-fuck, he’d burn out his eyes with a Bic lighter. But Anatole seems to have taken this news in stride. Regaining himself, he twines himself back into Fedya, like ivy scaling the wall of a house. Fedya shudders.

“Can’t let her have all the fun,” Anatole says, slurring only slightly.

Fedya quite agrees.

The next room, mercifully, is empty. A bedroom, decorated for the years when this house was still in regular use. Tall windows with thick velvet curtains, a vast and anachronistic four-poster bed in the center. Fedya locks the door behind them, having learned from Anatole’s sister’s mistake.

He strips off his shirt, then gasps as Anatole pushes him onto the bed, with more strength than Fedya expected. Either that, or Fedya is drunker than he thought. Balance is always the first to go.

Anatole straddles Fedya’s hips as he tugs off his own shirt. His body looks godlike through the semidark. He kisses Fedya again, and Fedya grasps up toward him, whimpering slightly as Anatole’s lips leave his.

But he soon learns not to regret the loss. Those lips have better things to do.

Anatole kisses the curve of Fedya’s throat, nudges the tip of his tongue along Fedya’s collarbone. His kisses are almost bites now, nipping at Fedya’s chest, sucking against him, and Fedya moans, they will turn to bruises but fuck that, he doesn’t care.

Without looking, Anatole’s hands play with the fly of Fedya’s jeans. He pulls them away, then his boxers, leaving Fedya naked on the bed. Fedya’s soft whimpers are begging, really, at this point. Dignity. After balance, that's the second thing to go. Anatole’s kiss dips between Fedya’s hipbones, then lower, until his tongue skates the length of Fedya’s cock, swirls slightly along the tip, and now he’s got his hand on Fedya’s balls and Fedya screams, just a little, a tiny wail, because Jesus Christ this is impossible, nothing should ever feel this good, it never has before.

Fedya grips Anatole’s hair and pulls his head forward, encouraging him to swallow deeper. Anatole gags a little on the full length, which Fedya doesn’t mind. But when he recovers his rhythm, that’s even better. Fedya feels himself building, so fast, as Anatole’s mouth caresses him, God, who taught him to do this, Fedya’s vision fades at the corners and all he can think of is Anatole—but he doesn’t want to come like this, not this first time.

“Stop,” he gasps.

Anatole stops at once. He looks up, flushed, out of breath, his lips moist. Fedya has never seen a thing so beautiful in his life.

“I want to fuck you,” Fedya says, honestly, bluntly, a sentence he’s never spoken aloud before, not to anyone.

Anatole grins and slithers out of his pants. Faster than Fedya would think possible, given their composition. He’s hard, too, but not like Fedya, who’s about eight seconds from an explosion of some sort. But he will hold himself back. Make it last. For this.

He eases Anatole into it, using one finger at first then two, then three, until the tiny moans that slip from him threaten to make Fedya come before he’s ready. With a grunt, Fedya spits into his palm—it’s not lube, it will hurt Anatole, probably, but fuck if he can wait long enough to find the real stuff. He thrusts into Anatole, again and again, his hands on Anatole’s hips, firm, insistent, desperate, nothing else in the world will satisfy him the way this does. Anatole whimpers in time with Fedya’s rhythm, the sound urging Fedya deeper until he comes, explosively, like gunfire.

He collapses back, breathless.

Anatole is breathing hard. It catches in the back of his throat still, that whine. Fedya smiles and helps Anatole finish with one magnanimous hand. He feels a little like a priest, distributing salvation. It takes less than thirty seconds before Anatole shudders into orgasm. He wails as he comes. Satisfaction spreads across his handsome face like sunrise. The warmth of that exhausted smile, and the way he rests his head against Fedya's chest as he sags backward.

Everything he does feels innocent and sinful at once. It’s ungodly charming. Fedya wants to kiss him for it, and does.

He’s never wanted anyone as much as he wants Anatole Kuragin. The man has him bewitched. And Fedya will do anything—anything on earth—to make love to him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love comments and kudos the way Marya D. loves threatening to murder Anatole Kuragin—very, very much.


	3. Harmony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which my boy Anatole is having A Day And A Half, and it's not even ten in the morning.
> 
> Also in which I don't know how to format text messages in fiction, so I'm just going to do the best I caaaaaan...

The next morning finds Anatole cutting across campus at ten minutes to nine. He squints slightly in the morning light. He wears his usual weekday uniform of dark jeans, tight but worn soft, and a gray long-sleeved tee, over which he’s thrown a black peacoat in deference to October. In one hand, he carries the leather strap of his violin case. In the other, he holds the absolute largest coffee the shop on the corner would sell him without a prescription.

Last night was a joy, and he doesn’t regret it, but he’s paying for it now. He drank almost half a bottle of vodka, then seduced the literal pants off Fedya Dolokhov and fucked him until the sun rose. Daylight brought them to their senses, and Anatole kissed a sheepish Fedya goodbye before returning to his dorm to shower, dress, and leave for class. He’s exhausted, nauseous, fighting a headache, and it hurts to walk in a hundred little ways.

It’s worth it.

His roommate Andrey glared at him as he entered, hair a wreck and lips swollen, sore and satisfied, but Anatole doesn’t care. Andrey is a prick, and his opinion doesn’t matter.

Anatole sighs and reaches into his coat pocket, tapping out three ibuprofen from the bottle inside and chasing them down with coffee. His breath fogs out ahead of him in the crisp air. He has to focus. He has class in two minutes, the one he needs to pass, the only one he cares about. But all he can think about is Dolokhov. His large brown eyes, soft and incapable of lying. The rough stubble of his beard. The coiled strength in his body, that power. The way his broad hands pinned Anatole’s wrists to the bed last night, and then those same hands stroked his hair, soft and gentle, as they kissed goodbye. Anatole can still smell the ghost of Fedya’s sweat, that curiously attractive musk of his cheap cologne.

Anatole shakes his head and enters the music building, where he has private lessons with Professor Bezukhov on the second floor.

He has to focus, goddammit.

Pierre is seated behind the desk in his office when Anatole enters. He's absently fucking around with a Dvorak melody, stretching the rhythm, adding little ostentatious turns. He sets his violin aside at once, though, as he switches from musician to teacher. It’s a shame, Anatole thinks. He rarely gets to hear Pierre play. The man is one of the finest violinists in Russia, and the reason Anatole chose to study here in the first place. A bit of an eccentric, certainly, with his wild hair and crumpled shirts and cardigans with elbow patches. But Anatole likes the old man well enough.

_Old man._ Pierre is twenty-seven, but to Anatole, at nineteen, this feels ancient.

Pierre has laid his spectacles on the desk in front of him, to better focus on the violin. He sets them on his nose as he looks at Anatole across the desk.

Anatole pauses. He's seen those spectacles before.

Christ. He saw them last night.

On the man beneath Hélène.

Anatole dissolves into a fit of coughing and busies himself with taking off his coat.

“Kuragin,” Pierre says, as Anatole unearths his violin from its case. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

“Bit of a night, _mon cher,_ ” Anatole says with a shrug. “Bit of a night. You know how that goes.”

Pierre turns very red and takes a drink of his own coffee to hide it. Anatole smirks. The shock has faded fast. He genuinely doesn’t care that his professor is fucking his sister, it’s barely even interesting, but knowing he can torment Pierre is certainly a fact worth logging away.

Anatole hums an A, bows one of the strings, then winces. The cold walk from his dorm to the building has fucked his tuning all to shit.

“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean,” Pierre says. “May I ask what kept you from practicing last night?”

Anatole hums another A, nudging the string a little sharper. “I think I fell in love,” he says.

Then he stops.

He looks at the violin between his chin and his shoulder. He doesn’t know where else to look. His own admission has bewildered him.

Love? Him? Fedya? It is, he supposes, possible. But it's deeply and wildly unlikely.

Pierre smiles. It seems he enjoys Anatole being uncomfortable for a change. “That’s as may be, Kuragin,” he says. “But if you can’t pour that love into the Saint-Saëns sonata, I won’t believe a word of it.”

Anatole nods. He can work out what’s happened between him and Fedya later. Right now, he has the music. The music makes sense. This much he can handle.

He stands, the now-tuned violin under his chin. Somehow, he's never been able to play right sitting. Pierre has suggested, wryly, that this is because Anatole feels born for solos, that the idea of playing fourth violin in an orchestra revolts him. There may be something to this. Pierre edges the score onto the music stand, but Anatole ignores it, not needing the reference.

He begins.

The theme in the beginning is wild, dramatic, searching. A yearning song, long elaborate runs and high vibrating questions. He's always liked this bit best, the showiness of this opening theme, its drama, its flair. It’s the kind of flashy, ostentatious piece he auditioned for the music program with the year before, the kind that makes old ladies clutch their pearls and mutter “too many notes” to their companions at the symphony.

He’s never liked the second theme much. You can’t showboat with quarter notes. It’s not impressive. But now, as he reaches it, it strikes him differently.

Softer. Simpler. Easier, something you could sing. It seems to stretch a beat or two longer than it should in every measure, as if time has ceased to have meaning, cannot have an impact on this brief, tender phrase. The music sounds sweet. Delicate. The music sounds like an invitation, a whisper that gets inside you and won’t leave, can’t, shouldn’t.

The music sounds like Fedya Dolokhov.

It sounds like his kiss. Simple and transient, timeless and unbearably beautiful.

Anatole has never played so well in his life.

He separates from himself, and the music fills him, replaces him. He plays as if the instruction to do so came from another man’s mind, the notes formed by another man’s hands.

The theme concludes the first movement of the sonata, a soft echo of itself. A murmur in a darkened bedroom, soft lips and a reluctant pulling away, while Fedya lay there naked and radiant, and happy, his charming self-consciousness forgotten.

Anatole lets the last note hang longer than it’s written, and trails off, though no cut is indicated. He hasn’t learned the second movement yet. He doesn’t know what comes next.

He closes his eyes, still feeling the residual vibration through the instrument. He wants to cry, but couldn’t explain why with a gun to his head.

After a long pause, Pierre removes his spectacles and cleans them on his rumpled shirt. His eyes are misty. Anatole has made the legendary violinist Peter Kirilovich Bezukhov weep. He feels pleasure in this, but not pride.

“Do you know, Kuragin,” Pierre says at last. “I think you’re right. You really have fallen in love.”

Anatole laughs and sinks down into the chair, violin across his knees. The spell is broken, and he's himself again. “Maybe,” he says.

“My selfish advice?” Pierre says. “Hold onto her. I want to hear you play that way again.”

“I’ll tell him you said so,” Anatole says.

Pierre blushes but doesn’t apologize. Anatole can see him filing the pronoun away, silently correcting himself for the future. This, among other reasons, is why Anatole has always liked Pierre, stodgy and philosophical though he is.

“Shall we begin the second movement?” Pierre asks, flipping the score to the proper page. “I think the adagio will suit you well this morning.”

Any other day, this would be laughable. Adagio suits Anatole as the Pope suits an orgy. But this morning, Anatole suspects Pierre may be right. He sits on the edge of the chair, peering at the notes, his fingers already moving to the neck of the instrument, seeking out the pitch.

They work through it for the remainder of Anatole’s ninety-minute session. It goes better than he expected—though he’s always been an excellent sight reader, twelve years of neglecting to practice will do that. At last, Pierre nods, and hands over the page of commentary he's made while Anatole played. Passages and techniques to practice, frequently missed notes, the words “key change, Kuragin, God damn you” written in all caps and underlined three times. Anatole sees this and laughs, then folds the page and tucks it into his case, tugging on his coat.

“I’ll see you in seminar on Wednesday,” Pierre says, as Anatole heads to the door.

He nods. He has every intention of going to Pierre’s music theory lecture on Wednesday, or at least right now he does. Time will tell, of course. He starts to leave, then, a thought occurring to him, turns back, halfway in the door and halfway out. Pierre watches him, waiting.

“She’s too young for you, old man,” he says.

Pierre blushes until his face resembles a glass of burgundy. “Who?”

Anatole rolls his eyes. “Hélène,” he says. “Honestly.”

“She’s twenty-one,” Pierre says, as if Anatole, her brother, doesn’t know this.

And Pierre is twenty-seven, but that’s not the point.

“She’s a student,” he says.

“She’s not _my_ student,” Pierre says.

Anatole laughs and shakes his head. Well, Hélène seemed happy last night, anyway, and Pierre can stand to get out more. Anatole will ask her about it, when he sees her next. In the meantime, knowing he’s made Pierre’s blood pressure hit one-forty is all Anatole really wants.

“Fair play to you,” Anatole says, touching his forehead to Pierre as if this is an elaborate Victorian novel and he has passed Pierre in the soot-choked streets of London. “Just treat her right, eh? I’m not much for chivalry, but I’ll make an exception.”

Leaving Pierre stammering behind the desk, he grins, then takes the stairs back down to street level, and into the growing afternoon.

His phone vibrates almost as soon as he enters the open air. He looks down, pinning the violin under one arm to ease the phone from his pocket. It’s from a number he doesn’t recognize.

_**—** done with class? _

He frowns, then taps out a reply with one hand.

_**AK:** yeah. who is this? _

The reply comes in a moment. Three quick bursts.

_**—** Dolokhov_  
_**—** you gave me your number last night_  
_**—** OK actually you put your name in my phone as Anatole Drunkasfuck but I figured it out_

Anatole laughs. He vaguely remembers this now. Smiling like an idiot, he sits on the low stone wall outside the music building and saves the number in his phone. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours since they saw each other. He checks the time; it hasn’t even been seven. Usually Anatole's the over-eager one, texting people literally on his way home from their bedrooms asking when he can see them again. It feels nice, to be pursued a little.

Then again, he hadn’t had Fedya’s number. God knew what stupid things he’d have done if he did.

_**AK:**  that’s my name. Anatole Drunkasfuckovich Kuragin. old Russian custom_  
_**AK:** what’s up?_

He barely has to wait.

_**FD:** don’t have class until four._  
_**FD:**  coffee?_  
_**FD:** I need it_

Coffee. A date.

Anatole’s heart skips a beat. It literally does. Like he’s sixteen years old and just discovered metaphor. It feels glorious. He wants it all in this moment. All the dumb shit you don’t want unless you have the right person to want it with. He wants coffee dates, dinner and a movie, sex on airplanes, drunken elopements across the country. Anatole’s library of romantic clichés is vast and varied, and he wants all of them.

He wants Fedya, more than he’s ever wanted anyone. It’s wild and powerful and beautiful, and glows like a comet, and he doesn’t want to question it, even if he should.

_**AK:** yeah, I bet ;) _

Fuck. He’s winking.

Blushing, though of course Fedya can’t see, he finishes.

_**AK:** I’m near the music building. meet you at Komoneno’s in ten? _

Again, barely ten seconds later. No one ever taught Fedya the art of playing hard to get, for which Anatole is grateful.

_**FD:** see you in ten. _

Anatole smiles, then texts.

_**AK:**  can’t wait ;) _

Fucking hell.

Why can’t he _stop?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the song I'm having Anatole work on, in case you're curious... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu-73wFr9yY
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you like, drop a note or a kudo or whatever else the spirit moves you to drop :)


	4. Third Impressions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here follows so much fluff you could stuff a pillow with it.
> 
> TW for some v. obliquely referenced past abuse, which I've added to the tags.

Anatole breezes into the coffeeshop ten minutes to the dot after he texted Fedya. He couldn’t have arrived here thirty seconds earlier unless he’d sprinted it like a 1600 meter race. Which he very nearly did. He takes a minute to catch his breath before entering. It’s not a first impression—not even a second impression—but he still wants to make the most of it.

Fedya is waiting for him at a high table near the window. Shorter than Anatole by a good four inches, his feet don’t quite reach the ground. He’s hooked them on the bar between the chair legs, and looks into the cardboard cup between his palms like it’s a crystal ball. Fedya has just finished showering, and his dark, wavy hair is damp and beautifully messy. He wears a black sweater that’s slightly too large, one with gray patches on the elbows. 

Anatole has seen this tactic before. It’s the sort of thing you wear on a date when you’re not certain if it’s a date or not. On other people, that kind of uncertainty feels fake to Anatole. On Fedya, it’s charming. Bewildering, but charming.

How can Fedya not realize how beautiful he is? Anatole can’t understand it. Fedya looks fierce and daring and strong and apologetic and kind, all in the same moment. Everything Anatole ever wanted. Anatole nearly pulled a muscle getting here in ten minutes. And yet Fedya is sitting there, anxious, wondering whether Anatole really wants to see him, or is just being polite.

Well. Anatole will put his mind at ease, as best he can.

He sits opposite Fedya, who looks up with a smile. That fucking smile. Goddamn. Anatole has never been one to play it cool—if you want someone, tell them, he reasons—but the things he's thinking of saying to Fedya right now are vulgar, even by his standards. He forces himself to tone it down. Little by little, he thinks. Gently.

“Wasn’t sure you’d come,” Fedya says.

“Soon as I could,” Anatole says. “Sorry. Came from the middle of nowhere.”

Fedya nods. “Yeah. What were you doing at the music building anyway?”

“Class,” Anatole says. “I’m the idiot who signed up for studio on Fridays at nine.” He only took the slot because he slept through sign-up and got the last appointment left, but he doesn’t tell Fedya this. Might as well pretend like he has his shit together. For as long as that lie will hold.

“You’re a music major?”

Anatole is almost a little insulted by the surprise in Fedya’s voice.  “Violin performance,” he says, holding up the case. As if he’s been carrying it around just for fun. “You?”

“Aerospace engineering.”

Anatole gapes. “You’re majoring in aerospace engineering.”

Fedya shrugs, as if he hasn’t just announced his intention to become a literal rocket scientist. “I’m good at math,” he says. “And, I mean, job security is good. For those of us not coasting on an inheritance.”

“I’m not—” Anatole begins.

“Listen, it’s not a bad thing,” Fedya says. “But don’t pretend you’re not. Only rich people play violin for a living. Your sister threw a party at a historical fucking landmark. For God’s sake.”

Anatole knew he’d have to explain this eventually. He’d hoped he’d have longer before it came up.

He can lie, of course. Usually does. Gives people half a story, or coughs and changes the subject. Usually they don’t pursue it beyond that. Most people don’t care. But there’s something about Fedya that makes it impossible for Anatole to lie to him.

“That’s Hélène,” he says, and eases off his coat, hanging it on the chair. “Not me.”

Fedya frowns. “What do you mean?”

This shouldn’t be so hard. He should lie, say anything, let it go. But for some reason, Fedya’s bold eyes and handsome mouth are making it unreasonably difficult for Anatole to speak. He holds up a hand and excuses himself, ducking to the counter to order a drink. He doesn’t need it, really—his bloodstream is forty percent coffee at this point—but he needs something to do with his hands. Something to hide behind.

A few minutes later, he returns with coffee, shot through with cream, and looks again at Fedya. He hoped that the brief interruption would shake him off the subject, but no luck.

“Anatole, you can’t do that,” Fedya says. “Answer the question. What do you mean?”

Anatole sighs. When he speaks, it’s more to his coffee than to Fedya. “Hélène's rich because our dad's rich,” he says. “But he cut me off three years ago. We don’t talk. I’m here because I got a music scholarship, not because he’s paying.”

Anatole has confessed this to a grand total of three people. Nadja, a woman he dated for six months, who looked at him like a rat and dumped him the next day. Pierre, who blushed scarlet and loudly changed the subject to the use of recapitulation in the sonata form. And Mary Bolkonskaya, the mousy but kind student who accompanies Anatole on piano, and who gave him a small sermon on the virtue of poverty when he mentioned it. None of those confessions ended well. Telling this to Fedya right out of the gate is a new height in stupidity. Anatole looks down at his coffee, wondering if there’s enough to drown himself in.

Fedya frowns. He’s silent for a moment. Then, he reaches across the table and takes Anatole’s hand, squeezing it lightly. Anatole looks up, surprised.

“His loss,” Fedya says. His voice is warm, steadying, as warm and steadying as the pressure of his hand on Anatole’s. “Music school's hard as shit to get into. And scholarship? You've gotta be fucking brilliant."

Anatole, for a brief, wild moment, is afraid that he might cry. He pulls himself together and smiles. He knows the smile comes off wrong, that Fedya won’t believe it, but he’d rather look insincere than pathetic. “I’m okay,” he says. 

“You don’t have to answer,” Fedya says, “but can I ask why he cut you off?”

“Pick your reason,” Anatole says. “I drink. I party. I’m queer. I want to play the violin for a fucking living. I may have briefly gotten arrested once. He’s a piece of shit. Mostly that last one.”

He sees Fedya look at him differently. Not suspiciously, not anxiously, but differently. Anatole remembers, in that moment, that Fedya has seen him naked—in fact, has seen him naked more than he’s seen him clothed. He’ll have noticed the scars. He’ll put two and two together, and Fedya is good at math, he’ll end up at four. Anatole shifts in his chair, mortified. He doesn’t want that to be how Fedya sees him. As that scared child he used to be, the anxious teenager who flinched at sudden movements and raised male voices. He wants to be more than that. More than what his father has made him. 

Fedya takes Anatole’s other hand and holds them both, and Anatole looks up, and Fedya’s eyes are smiling. Anatole bites his lips and then laughs, softly, to himself. He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve people being nice to him, not the way Fedya is nice.

_ Nice.  _ It sounds like such a stupid word. Empty. Meaningless.

And yet, oddly accurate.

Fedya Dolokhov is nice. It baffles Anatole, and drags him in deeper.

“I’m on scholarship too, you know,” Fedya says. It’s the perfect thing to say. “Work study. I couldn’t be here without it.”

Anatole smiles. “And that,” he says, “would be a goddamn shame.”

Fuck. Has he always been such a sentimental piece of shit? The answer, of course, is yes, he has always been a sentimental piece of shit. But he’s never been as sincere about it as he is in this moment.

“I want to know everything about you,” Anatole says. It’s too forward, probably, but he doesn’t care. 

“There’s not much to know.” Fedya blushes. “Honestly. I’m not too important.”

Beneath the table, Anatole’s foot now rests against Fedya’s, his knee against Fedya’s thigh. It’s not suggestive, barely erotic. It feels right to be touching him, that’s all, to be close to him in as many ways as he can.

“I disagree,” Anatole says, grinning.

As their coffee gets cold, they tell each other everything.

Fedya tells Anatole about his life in central Moscow with his mother, the double shifts she’d pick up at the hospital to keep the lights on. He tells Anatole about his time at Austerlitz, the rigid discipline of ROTC, how Fedya had only signed on to waive his class fees, how he felt the army crushing him, like thin metal beneath a hammer, into someone he wasn’t. How he transferred to the university and majored in engineering because he swore he’d never go another night without a meal, never spend another December with his mother worrying whether the heat would shut off, never again. 

Anatole tells Fedya about growing up in Petersburg, the quiet games he and Hélène and their older brother played upstairs while their parents shouted and glass broke and the neighbors pretended not to hear. He tells Fedya about when his mother died, how he and Hélène burned through a bottle of vodka and threw rocks through the windows of the church where Aline Kuragina was buried, because fuck the priest for burying her, fuck God for daring. How he poured himself into his music, because the music centered him and saved him, and he cared about it more than almost anything in the world.

They talk about Fedya’s calculus professor, who Fedya swears has a glass eye. They talk about Anatole’s passion for the discography of Britney Spears—“it’s on par with Mozart,” he says, as Fedya snorts into his coffee. They talk about what superpower they would choose, if given the option—Anatole selects flight, while Fedya picks the ability to freeze time. 

They talk until Fedya looks at the clock over Anatole’s shoulder and realizes that it’s five minutes to four, they’ve been talking for over five hours, and he has class on the other side of campus. 

“Fuck,” Fedya says, jumping up from the table. 

Anatole rises too, more gracefully. Fedya pulls on his jacket and slings a backpack over his shoulders. But then he looks back at Anatole, and his haste vanishes. He takes both Anatole’s hands in his. They're inches from one another, and Anatole notices again how perfectly they fit together, as if their bodies had once been one body, split down the center. Fedya’s scent in Anatole’s lungs is heaven.

“When can I see you again?” Anatole asks.

“Tomorrow?” Fedya says. “Come to practice early.”

Practice begins Saturday morning at nine-thirty. Any earlier than that is inhumane, especially as Anatole slept for seven whole minutes the night before.

“I can’t wait,” Anatole says, and means it.

Fedya’s smile broadens, and his lips rise to Anatole’s, and they kiss, softly, without the wildness of the night before, but with a new tenderness. Anatole has never felt more treasured, more wanted, than he does in Fedya’s kiss. He's never felt safer.

They kiss for far longer than they meant to. Anatole knows he’s making Fedya late for class, he knows this, he really does, but it’s just so hard to fucking care. Finally, Fedya pulls back—Anatole whines softly as he does.

“I have to go,” Fedya says.

“I know,” Anatole murmurs, and kisses him again anyway.

Two minutes later, Fedya finally pulls himself free of Anatole, very red in the face.

“I really have to go,” Fedya says, though his voice is hoarse, as if it’s torturing him to stop.

“Tomorrow?” Anatole says.

“Tomorrow,” Fedya agrees. Then, with an air of religious sacrifice, Fedya turns and leaves, almost running to class, and Anatole loses sight of him in the street.

Anatole leans back against the table. All his breath escapes from him in a single sigh.

That answers that question, then.

Anatole is hopelessly, pathetically, ridiculously, recklessly, irrevocably in love with Fedya Dolokhov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love kudos and comments dearly and with all my heart :)


	5. What's the Buzz?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: has no idea how to format text messages  
> Also me: does an entire chapter basically in text messages
> 
> Clearly I am my own biggest problem.
> 
> (Also, this chapter title is the closest I will ever get to writing Jesus Christ Superstar fic, though not for lack of trying.)

Back in his dorm later that evening, Anatole lays flat on his back on his bed. His head dangling off the mattress toward the floor, he holds his phone aloft like a cashier checking a bill for authenticity. Andrey isn’t here, thank God. He couldn’t handle company right now.

Only one type of company will do.

Anatole needs advice. 

And as for the kind of advice he needs, only one person has ever been able to provide it.

**AK:** Lena  
 **AK:** Lena  
 **AK:** Lena  
 **AK:** fuck I know you have your phone   
**AK:** come on  
 **AK:** Helene Vasiliyevna Kuragina  
 **AK:** if you don’t answer me I will tell Pierre you have leprosy I swear to god

**HK:** Toto what the actual fuck

**AK:** THANK YOU  
 **AK:** take literally 30 years to answer your phone why don’t you

**HK:** do I want to know what this is about?

**AK:** meet me for dinner? 

**HK:** Toto I told you  
 **HK:** if you’re broke I will send you money for food  
 **HK:** although if you spend it on vodka I will actually kill you

**AK:** no seriously  
 **AK:** I need to talk to you

**HK:** about what?

Anatole pauses. He stares at his phone, wondering whether he actually has to type these words, or if his long silence will carry the message. With a sigh and another glance at the door—upside-down now, from his slightly melodramatic position across the bed—he begins to type.

_Lena, I think I’m_

He deletes this.

_So last night I think I_  

He deletes this.

_I’m so in love with this boy Lena I think I might_

He deletes this too.

**HK:** jesus fucking christ, brother  
 **HK:** are you composing an epic novel about the Napoleonic Wars or do you have something to say?

Anatole swears, then types, grits his teeth, and sends it before he can second-guess himself.

**AK:** I’m in love 

A brief pause. He can see the raised eyebrow in Hélène’s text as she replies. Quick texts, one after the other, as though she can make him see reason through sheer volume. 

**HK:** you’re always in love  
 **HK:** like, every day  
 **HK:** with everyone  
 **HK:** remember when you were five and you said you were in love with Lenechka?  
 **HK:** my cat, Toto  
 **HK:** Lenechka my goddamn cat  
 **HK:** I had to tell you that you were a human being and could not be in love with a cat 

**AK:** Lena goddammit not this time  
 **AK:** I’m serious

He pauses, then texts the next line, the one that’s been ringing through his head ever since he left Fedya, thirty short minutes before.

**AK:** I’m so in love I’m scared

He sees Hélène start and stop responding several times. He drums his thumbs along the edge of the phone, in rhythm with the Saint-Saëns sonata that has been stuck in his head all day. Finally, she sends a quick message, what he suspects is a shortened, profanity-free version of the question she’s been drafting all this time.

**HK:** what’s their name?

**AK:** Fedya Dolokhov

There is a long pause, during which Anatole would bet every object in his possession that Hélène is Googling Fedya as if her very soul depends on it. She’s good at this. It only takes her about forty-five seconds.

**HK:** shit  
 **HK:** fuck  
 **HK:** fuck yeah ok  
 **HK:** I mean   
**HK:** I am not mad about your decision-making skills  
 **HK:** in this one specific instance  
 **HK:** goddamn

**AK:** Lena seriously

**HK:** I’m way serious  
 **HK:** He/him? 

**AK:** yeah

**HK:** ok just saying, boy is way hot, brother  
 **HK:** I would hit that

**AK:** I would kill you

**HK:** joking  
 **HK:** (not joking)  
 **HK:** ((I’m just saying though if you really loved me you would share))

**AK:** literal murder

**HK:** okok got it  
 **HK:** (((if it was anyone else but you I totally would though just saying)))  
 **HK:** you talk to him yet?

**AK:** we met for coffee this morning

**HK:** coffee? what are you, forty  
 **HK:** ok so what did you do after that

**AK:** nothing  
 **AK:** we just. TALKED  
 **AK:** we met on campus at ten and we talked  
 **AK:** I just left him now

**HK:** just now?  
 **HK:** it is four fucking thirty in the goddamn afternoon 

**AK:** I KNOW  
 **AK:** I don’t know what to do  
 **AK:** I’m meeting him tomorrow morning too what is happening I don’t even I just

**HK:** you talked to this boy for six and a half hours and you didn’t even try to get in his pants  
 **HK:** Toto it’s like I don’t even know you anymore

**AK:** well

**HK:** well??  
 **HK:** you already??

**AK:** um

**HK:**???????????????  
 **HK:** dinner  
 **HK:** six  
 **HK:** Leo’s

**AK:** I can’t afford Leo’s jfc

**HK:** you will pay me back by telling me the story of how you got that ass  
 **HK:** Toto I swear to god who taught you narrative structure  
 **HK:** you LEAD with the fuck, you CONCLUDE with the existential crisis 

**AK:** <3

**HK:** god this is just  
 **HK:** this is the best thing to come into my life in months 

**AK:** I thought Pierre was the best thing to come in you in months

**HK:** ANATOLE  
 **HK:** NO

**AK:** ANATOLE YES  
 **AK:** see you at six

**HK:** fuck you  
 **HK:** don’t be late 

Anatole darkens the screen of his phone and tosses it on the bed. He is smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos bring life and light into this messed-up world. Leave one to make a day! (Mine, specifically.)


	6. A Secret History

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Fedya, ol' buddy, ol' pal, Mr. Bad-at-Feelings himself. It's been a minute.

Fedya walks out of the lecture hall at six, after class. It’s already dark at this point. It’s October, and in fact was almost dark already when he left Anatole Kuragin and sprinted across campus to Calc III, faster than he’s ever moved before. It’s like Anatole’s kiss has lightened his legs, propels him forward. It's like he inherited Anatole's speed, his grace.

It’s like he can’t even think.

He doodled all the way through the class, not taking notes, doing none of the practice sets. He bit the end of his pencil until the eraser looked like chewed gum. He found a paper clip on the floor and straightened it out, then bent it into an awkward rectangle, then twirled it around his finger in a slow, steady rhythm.

Why he even went to class at all is beyond him.

He starts the slow walk back toward his dorm, on the far south end of campus. It occurs to him, as he goes, that he doesn’t even know where Anatole lives. They might be in the same building. They might be on the same floor. Fedya’s only been at this school for six weeks. It’s more than possible. The thought perks him up, slightly, as he walks. Fedya might be new, but he's already found a spot on the roof of his dorm where he and Sonya can split a joint without the RAs having a heart attach. Anatole seems like the type who might like to join him.

He knows he's being ridiculous.

After so many years of taking life seriously, he feels, rather, that he is entitled.

He sweeps into the dorm around six-thirty and heads to the dining hall, his backpack dangling over one shoulder. He realizes, as he does it, how hungry he is. He hasn’t eaten anything since the day before—slept through breakfast, completely lost track of his afternoon. The hangover has faded, somehow, though it wasn’t so bad to begin with. He’s always been able to hold his liquor, and anyway, he was only about a quarter as drunk as Anatole was.

Dinner is shit, but he’s used to that. His scholarship includes a meal plan, so unless someone else is paying for him, shit is pretty much what’s on the menu. He picks up a tray of something they're calling stew and scans the dining hall, searching for a familiar face.

It doesn’t take him long.

Sonya, seated near the darkened window, half-stands up and waves at him. He nods at her—hands full of almost-food, he can’t wave back—and weaves through the room toward her. Sonya seems happy, which Fedya finds as an odd relief. His first friend on campus, he doesn’t see her smile nearly as much as he’d like to. She’s always worrying about something, somebody else, something she feels she should have done, though no one but Sonya has expected Sonya to do it. But tonight, she seems relaxed, comfortable. Her hair is piled into a bun, and she wears leggings and a thick gray sweater that ends halfway down her thighs.

Beside her, as Fedya sits down and drops his backpack on the floor, is a woman he’s never seen before. But the resemblance between them is unmistakable. The new woman is the type who dresses up for class, wearing a long-sleeved dress and a paisley scarf, and she carries a large leather purse instead of a backpack. Still, the two women have the same smile, the same eyes, and they look at ease enough with one another that Fedya knows they have to be related.

If it weren't for the family connection, Fedya would have hated this girl on sight. Frivolous, fashionable socialite, automatically convinced everyone in a room will love her. As it is, he gives her the benefit of the doubt. She's not his type, not for friendship and not for anything else, but association with Sonya goes a long way.

“Hey,” he says, and nods at the woman. “Fedya Dolokhov. Hope you don’t mind a burnout crashing your family dinner.”

“Don't be silly,” she says, and her smile does seem genuine enough. “Natasha Rostova.”

Sonya’s cousin. Fedya has heard about her. All good things, though Sonya has never said a bad thing about anybody in her whole life.

“Didn’t think you’d make it to class today at all, Fedya,” Sonya says, spearing a forkful of salad. “You're never that late. Something more interesting to do? Or someone?”

She grins at him. He blushes. He sees her eyes widen, and blushes worse.

Fuck. She was joking. And he walked right into it.

“Wait,” Sonya says. “Really? Were you on a _date_?”

She pushes her tray away and folds her legs up under her, seated in an almost yogic pose, facing Fedya. Her face is shining. She is fucking delighted by this turn of events. Natasha, who barely knows Fedya from a hole in the ground, is listening too, and seems likewise thrilled. Why Fedya can’t stop blushing, God only knows.

“It’s nothing,” Fedya says.

“Fedya,” Sonya says, and she really is smiling like it’s Christmas goddamn morning, “come on. The most meaningful relationship I've ever seen you have is with the woman who works the graveyard shift at Sam's Pizza."

"It's good pizza," Fedya says, defensively.

"It's not," Natasha says.

"At two a.m. it is."

"Fedya, don't change the subject," Sonya says. "Who was it?”

Fedya would rather curl up into a ball and die than talk about this right now.

“Or we can guess,” Natasha says.

Fuck. Of course. She’s just like her cousin. Both of them, impossible.

“Fedya, if you don’t tell us, we’re just going to assume the worst,” Sonya says. She shares a conspiratorial glance with Natasha, who bites her lower lip to tamp down a wicked smile.

“You were definitely on a date with Professor Mikhailovna, weren't you," Sonya says. "Age is just a number, Fyedka."

“No, Olga Petrova, she’s got that garlic smell, that’s hot,” Natasha says.

“Or Hélène Kuragina? You know, live on the wild side a little," Sonya says.

Fedya blushes like it’s his goddamn job.

The women gasp in the kind of unison only best friends and relatives can manage.

“No,” Sonya almost-screams.

“Hélène?” Natasha demands.

“You’re joking.”

“Fedya, I swear to God, really?”

Multiple people in the dining hall are staring at him by this point.

“No,” Fedya says sharply. “No, it’s not Hélène.”

“Then why—” Sonya begins.

Fedya sees understanding rise in Sonya’s eyes like the sun. She looks at Natasha, who looks back, uncomprehending. Then Sonya looks back at Fedya.

“Oh,” she says carefully. “Oh, I see. Wrong Kuragin.”

Natasha’s eyes widen. Fedya almost expects her jaw to drop like she’s a character in an old cartoon.

“Of course,” Sonya says. “That’s why you joined the track team, isn’t it?”

“No,” Fedya says defensively. “That was incidental.”

“Wait,” Natasha says. “Slow down.”

Fedya speaks in exaggerated slow motion, making every vowel last a full second. “I’m gay, Natasha.”

Sonya snorts into her coffee.

“No, not that,” Natasha says. “You’re talking about Anatole?”

“Is there a third Kuragin?” Fedya asks. He almost doesn’t want to know the answer to that question. If there is, in fact, a third Kuragin, his heart might explode from overstimulation. He can hardly handle the one he does know.

“Yeah, actually,” Sonya says, though Natasha interrupts her, as this is not even remotely the point.

“I’m sorry, you just...you just don’t seem like Anatole’s type,” Natasha says. She’s not meeting Fedya’s eyes anymore, which, to say the least, is troubling.

Fedya picks up his mug of tea—not because he’s going to drink it, but because he needs something to do with his hands. The way Natasha said that sentence, she knows something. Something she’s worried about telling him. And, by extension, something Fedya is worried about hearing.

“What’s his type, usually?” he asks.

Sonya looks at Natasha, warning her against saying whatever she’s about to say.

Natasha doesn’t look at her cousin. She coughs, then locks her eyes on Fedya.

“Me,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, I appreciate comments and kudos more than you even ~know~! Any feedback is treasured and appreciated :)


	7. Confidante

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, world! This several-month-long break was brought to you by the letter "incredibly busy class schedule" and the number "seasonal depression."

Leo’s is smoky, dim, warm despite the November chill. Thick scarlet curtains block out the view of the street, and votive candles glitter on each table, casting strange shadows beneath the faces of the diners. Anatole unbuttons his coat as he scans the restaurant, which mostly seems to hold hipster couples with multiple piercings and old men in their seventies wearing unsettling quantities of tweed. The only people motivated to spend a full day’s salary on a meal: the ironically wealthy and the elderly.

Well, and his sister, who has never done an ironic thing in her life.

Hélène sits at a two-top in the corner, rapidly texting someone. Her earrings almost skim her shoulders, and her unruly hair has been wound into a tight ballerina bun. She could be mistaken for a dance major, were she not two semesters away from a degree in biochem. As if she doesn’t show Anatole up enough already. Sometimes he wishes she'd just fail at something for once, so the weight of being the family disappointment wouldn't all have to rest on his shoulders. Fuck up her eyeliner, maybe. Get a parking ticket.

She looks up as he approaches and waves him into the other chair, finishing the text with her other hand.

“You’re late.”

“Five minutes late is on time,” Anatole huffs. "Also, hi." He shrugs off his coat and reaches for a menu, but Hélène slaps his hand away.

“I already ordered for us.”

“Jesus Christ.  _Five minutes_ is all.”

“Toto, you have terrible taste. What did you have for dinner last night, cheese out of a can?”

In fact, he hadn't eaten anything last night. The night before, he'd had two packets of instant ramen and an energy drink while writing his entire Russian Lit paper in one sitting, but he sees no reason for Hélène to know this, so he contents himself with sticking out his tongue.

“So,”Hélène says. She leans forward and rests her chin on latticed fingers, as the waiter breezes by and leaves a basket of bread. “Spill. Tell me all about Fyodor Dolokhov, international man of mystery.”

Anatole sighs and takes a swig of the vodka she’s ordered him. Never one to beat around the bush, Hélène. Well, so much the better. There's nothing else he'd rather talk about. “I don’t know, Lena. He’s not like anyone else I know. He’s just…”

“Extraordinary,” Hélène drawls, in an overblown British accent.

He snorts into his vodka. “Shut up.”

“That’s what you sound like.”

“He _is_ ,” Anatole says. He’s talking with his hands now, and he isn't even drunk enough to justify it, but what does that matter. “Honestly, he’s got these eyes, Lena.”

“I would hope so.”

“They see me like no one’s ever seen me before. And he’s so smart, he’s brilliant, and kind, and his shoulders, Lena, and his arms, and—”

“You’re mooning, Toto,” Hélène says pertly. “I’ve heard this before.”

“You haven’t,” he says. “It’s different. I don’t know how, but it is. It’s not just that he’s hot, it’s…”

Hélène laughs and gestures for him to go ahead. “Tell me everything,” she says. “I know you’re going to do it anyway. Start now while we’ve got vodka.”

No one ever listens to Anatole like Hélène does. No one ever listens to Anatole at all, really—he knows he has a tendency to ramble, to lose his train of thought and pick it up again six stops down the track without warning. In high school, the phrase his rhetoric teacher used was "Joycean stream of consciousness," which of course was a polite way of saying "absolute garbage as a conversationalist." But Hélène has always known how to listen. Ever since they were kids, when Anatole would wake with a nightmare, or have an idea for a brilliant invention, or cook up a scheme to run away and get adopted by Irina Volkova who owned the consignment shop downtown, Hélène was always the only one who listened.

He lets the story unfold as the waiter comes back with their meals: cedar-smoked salmon for her, baked spaghetti for him. It's a sight better than instant ramen, but he barely eats, too wrapped up in the telling. When he’s finished, Hélène spears a pearl onion with her fork and shakes her head.

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” she says. “To any other person on earth, this is good news. He’s hot, he’s nice, he’s smart, he’s into you…”

There's one bit of information he's left out of the original telling. Anatole looks down at his spaghetti, looking for courage in the noodles and cheese. He doesn't find it, of course, so he'll have to make do with what little he has.

“He doesn’t know I haven’t broken up with Natasha yet,” he says.

Helene chokes on a mouthful of vodka.

Shit.

Anatole buries his head in his arms and waits for his sister to remember how to breathe. Of course this was a disaster. What had he been hoping for? That Hélène would say _oh, don't worry about it, Toto, that's an easy fix_? It's not. He knows it's not. And if he knows it's a problem, it's got to really be a problem. Anatole can be accused of many things, but overthinking has never been one of them.

Hélène leans her head back against her chair and sighs. “Toto, you fucking idiot.”

“Listen. I didn’t expect this to happen.”

“Why does shit like this always happen to you, I wonder? Christ." She takes a deep breath, then speaks as if explaining something simple to a very dull child. "If you're poly, that's fine, little brother, but the catch is, everyone involved has to _know_."

“I don't like that tone,” Anatole says, still with his head in his arms. “You make it sound like I have a reputation.”

“You do have a reputation. As a fucking idiot.”

“Lena.”

He raises his head in desperation. His voice comes out wrong, but there’s nothing he can do about it. It comes out small. Frightened. It comes out like a child who’s just had his hand slapped for reaching for something beautiful. He hates himself for it, but nothing new there.

He's never loved anyone like he loves Fedya. This is different, he knows it. And now he's gone and fucked it up before he even started, because he's pathetic, because he doesn't deserve to have anything as beautiful as that, and maybe his father was right, maybe everything he touches is a disaster, maybe the world would be better off if he—

"Toto, you're spiraling," Hélène snaps, and grabs his hand. Her grip is gentle, but the pressure is firm. Enough to bring him back from the clouds, where his mind has been dragging him without his consent. Of course it's enough. This is hardly the first time she's had to bring him back.

"Am not," he lies under his breath.

Hélène sighs again. “Listen. You can fix this. She doesn’t know about Fedya. He doesn’t know about her. End things the right way, wait a week, ask him out on a real date, and then you’re fine. OK? You’re fine.”

It didn’t feel fine. Nothing about it felt fine. But Hélène’s hand is still holding his, and the candle on the table between them is still burning which means there must still be air in the room, and gradually, though it doesn't feel fine, it feels closer.

“Nothing’s gone wrong yet,” she says. “Probably nothing will. But I’ll be here if it does. Understand?”

Anatole nods. He’s not going to cry. Not here, not in this Russo-Italian-French triple-fusion bougie restaurant in front of what’s probably half the philosophy department. He doesn’t cry anymore, at least not in front of other people. But Hélène knows him better than anyone ever will, and that includes knowing when to change the subject.

“So,” she says, knowing that Anatole has never mourned the loss of a segue, “I got a call from Papa this morning.”

Some change of subject.

Anatole sits up straighter. The pasta is delicious—had better be, for what Lena’s paying for it—but the taste sours on his tongue. He takes a hard drink of vodka and raises his eyebrows, inviting her to go on. Better to know the worst right away than to waste an entire evening wondering what the worst might be.

“He’s hosting a fundraiser back in Petersburg, it sounds like,” she says. “Something about a charity he’s founding for international refugees.”

Anatole laughs darkly. “My condolences to the refugees.”

“It’s the second week of December. Black tie. Silent auction. All the usual bullshit.”

Anatole frowns. “And I'm supposed to care because…”

Hélène gives first her fish, then her brother an apologetic look. “Because he specifically told me to make sure you come.”

Anatole feels the pasta writhe in his stomach. He swallows, then takes another drink. Nothing like vodka for a troubled stomach, he figures. It works well enough for troubled nerves.

“He wouldn’t.”

It’s not wishful thinking, it’s fact. Vasily Kuragin wouldn’t ask Anatole to come to an event where the family is meant to look respectable. In Vasily’s mind, his youngest son is good for a photo op and not much else. He's said as much, in about as many words, and that was back when he and Anatole were on speaking terms. Give Anatole permission to make his own decisions at a high-profile event, Vasily thinks, and he’ll wind up hooking up with the niece of the foreign minister in her luxury car out back. (Which, of course, Anatole had done three years ago, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Hélène sighs. “I wanted to warn you. So you’ve got time to get ready. Find a suit. And a date that won’t make Papa lose his entire fucking mind.”

If Anatole could just somehow die in this exact moment, that would be preferable. His heart, which had frozen at Hélène's first revelation, is now twitching like a rabbit's at her second. “He said I’m supposed to bring a date?”

“He didn’t say that exactly,” Hélène says, “but you know how he is. If you're not paired up, you're spoiled goods. Besides, it would make it easier, right? Someone on your side."

_You'll be on my side,_ Anatole thinks, but doesn't say. He's a sentimental idiot and he's not ashamed of it, but there's a limit, even for him.

"Maybe I’ll invite Fedya,” she adds with a wink. “Make the whole thing worth your while.”

Anatole laughs, and his entire mood shifts. He came here to tell Hélène, and now Hélène knows. He can think about the rest in the morning. Besides, the idea of Fedya and Hélène arm-in-arm is so ridiculous it cuts through his horror. “Don’t you think Pierre would get jealous?”

Hélène blushes, but from her mannerisms no one but Anatole would know she’s embarrassed. “He’s a good guy, you know.”

“A good _man_ ,” Anatole teases. “I’m sure you guys can do all the usual romantic things together. Set up a 401(K). Look at nursing homes.”

“Shut up, Toto,” she says, but she’s laughing now. “If anyone’s fucking up in a relationship right now, I promise, it’s not me.”

“Don’t see why we can’t both be fuck-ups.”

“Because we’re Kuragins,” she says, and signals the waiter for the dessert menu. “When we fuck up, we fuck up big. If we both did it at the same time, the world would end.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do people eat instant ramen in Russia? I am unsure.


End file.
